Should an expensive asteroid watching system should be installed around the world??

Question

Should an expensive asteroid -watching system should be installed around the world? Back up your views with appropriate data.

Answer 1

some argue yes because asteroids can cause massive loss of life.

some argue no because it's not likely to happen for a long time and the money is better spent on starving children.  

Answer 2

No.  There are thousands and thousands of astronomers all over the world who are looking for near earth objects.  They are looking for things that they can have their name on like the newest comet or asteroid.  As soon as a new one is found, then everyone goes and looks at it.  Thousands of people chart it and figure out the trajectory.  What could be better than that?  

http://www.spaceweather.com/

This site towards the lower part of their home page there is a link to all the near earth known objects so far and links to the people tracking them.

Answer 3

There is:

http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/

http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_...

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

Answer 4

What I would rather see is a solar orbiting radar system to find and track at least a portion of near Earth objects. The question of impact is not "if" but rather "when." We've had two major mass extinctions from orbital impacts (both the beginning and end of the Mesozoic era) and if the Tunguska blast had occurred in an urban area the results would have been truly catastrophic. Astronomers, no matter how many can only see a tiny portion of the sky during nighttime hours and it takes a long time to determine speed, distance and bearing of near Earth objects. Radar could do it all in real time and cover far more area 24/7. Realistically we could only monitor a very small portion of near Earth objects but as an example, the more drivers on the highway you're aware of, the less likely the possibility of an accident.  

Answer 5

Yes.

Why?  Because we should really need to know if there are more of these out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(29075)_195...

1/300 chance of impact is not good considering the outcome if impact occurs.

Answer 6

There is actually already a group at NASA JPL that monitors all the potentially threatening asteroids.  They update the orbital information constantly based off of observations from observatories around the world.  It is not an autonomous asteroid watching system but there is an asteroid watching system that consists of engineers and scientists worldwide.......this IS expensive.

edit: here is the JPL website for Near Earth Asteroid Tracking

http://neat.jpl.nasa.gov/

Answer 7

Ground has broken on the Large Synoptic Survey telescope.  It will be able to image the entire sky to 25th magnitude, every three days.  This should allow cataloging asteroids down to 100 meters.  Not much happens in space in 3 days.  This should give us considerable warning of incoming stuff.

We should start demonstrating technology needed to change the course of asteroids.  Things like planting a transponder on one so that small changes can be measured.  Then trying various things out - tricks with light, a mass driver, and so on.

The dinosaurs died out because they did not have a robust space technology in place.